Like a waterfall in slow motion, Part One
1 year ago
Monday, October 25, 2010
Now playing
So, it may seem like I've been MIA lately. And yeah, maybe a little. But my absence wasn't all for naught. Nope. Behold, and please update your bookmarks, Google Readers, and Twitter feeds accordingly: www.golly-pop.com
Sunday, October 10, 2010
From the desk of
Hello, first wedding present! This darling stationary is from sweet Stefanie. It’s deliciously bridal, it features my future name (which is kind of surreal, really, albeit in a delightful sort of way) and it came with gorgeous fuchsia envelopes! (Pro tip: Don’t ever buy fuchsia envelopes because once you do, you’ll want to wallpaper your life with them.)
I’ve been meaning to share them for weeks (and weeks and weeks and…you get the idea) because they are just so freaking adorable (actually, I believe my first word for them was “Eeeeee!”) but something called Spending an Inordinate Amount of Time at My Fiancé’s Scanner-less Apartment came up and spoiled those plans. (And hey, would you look at me already upholding that very important marital tenant, It’s Always the Husband’s Fault! I take my Mrs. job seriously!)
Anyway, the point is that I just love these little cards, and I’m so grateful to Mrs. Stefanie for getting them for me! And now every little note I write feels like it should be sent via snail mail so everyone else can enjoy them. It's a problem, y'all!
I’ve been meaning to share them for weeks (and weeks and weeks and…you get the idea) because they are just so freaking adorable (actually, I believe my first word for them was “Eeeeee!”) but something called Spending an Inordinate Amount of Time at My Fiancé’s Scanner-less Apartment came up and spoiled those plans. (And hey, would you look at me already upholding that very important marital tenant, It’s Always the Husband’s Fault! I take my Mrs. job seriously!)
Anyway, the point is that I just love these little cards, and I’m so grateful to Mrs. Stefanie for getting them for me! And now every little note I write feels like it should be sent via snail mail so everyone else can enjoy them. It's a problem, y'all!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Something blue
Sean and I (and let’s not forget the all-important hands that hold the checkbook) have been shopping for wedding venues since the weekend after we got engaged. And it’s seemed like all the ones we visited have either been too ugly, too choppy, too expensive, or simply too “meh” for at least one person’s tastes.
The biggest problem was that Sean and I had very specific notions about what we wanted: a wide open room in a stand-alone building that would absolutely wow our guests as soon as they walked in. Unfortunately, fulfilling those specifications turned out to be much easier said than done. For one thing, what we wanted doesn’t really exist in DFW—pretty much all you can get in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States is a hotel ballroom or a country club that seats twenty people per room. And the few places that did fit the bill wanted to A) dictate which caterer we used, B) force us to have our rehearsal during business hours on a Thursday, and C) charge us a $7,000 rental fee and $25 a head for house wine and Bud Light. And I’m sorry, but no one in my immediate wedding planning circle can fathom spending $14,000 just so that my four year old cousin can walk in the door and have a glass of Merlot.
Everyone says couples should book their venue at least a year in advance or risk hosting the blessed event in the backyard, so I was thrilled that Sean’s relatively early proposal gave me a good 15 months to plan. And then our venue search started holding up the whole show. Since we didn’t have a venue, we didn’t have a date, so we couldn’t book our vendors. (Not that we knew what kinds of vendors we’d need anyway, since so many venues come with laundry lists of preferences and regulations.) We were getting so close to the wire (our negative one-year anniversary is next week, after all) that I couldn’t think about my wedding without a roll of Tums, a handful of Zoloft, and a shaker of vodka.
On Saturday Sean and I visited the only remaining viable venue within a 50 mile radius of our residences. Sean thought it was the nicest venue we’d seen so far, I liked it well enough to sign on the dotted line and just be done with the whole ordeal, and my parents were prepared to pay the deposit. When I went to bed on Sunday night, I felt a mild sense of relief that I would no longer have to fret about location and a nagging sense of fear that my wedding was turning into this big, ugly monster that was stomping out of my control. And then on Monday morning, the festering boil on the butt of my matrimony finally burst—all over my place of business.
I was two minutes away from my office when I got word that the venue that I thought everyone had finally agreed on didn’t pass economic muster. And then I spent the first two hours of my workday completely despondent—I sent countless distraught emails and texts and prayed that my coworkers wouldn’t notice my watery eyes or my quivering bottom lip. By the end of the morning, I’d actually gotten the green light to book any venue I wanted, but the damage was already done. Worries about the venue had been polluting my wedding planning experience for so long that they had finally rendered me completely numb to the whole event. I just wanted to skip it. (I know I’m prone to histrionics, people, but believe me when I say that at 3:00 Monday afternoon, the only five words I could speak about my wedding were “I don’t give a shit.”)
When I finally got face-time with my fiancé after work, I practically begged him to pick the venue. After all, he’d been super involved since day one, so surely he could be trusted to propel us through all the mucky muck to the blessed end. But no. He was also so disgusted by the whole process that he refused to play along. Plus he was adamant that his bride-to-be be happy with her own wedding, so he wasn’t about to chose for me.
The conversation that followed would have made George Banks blush: Why couldn’t we find a venue that suited us? Why are weddings so offensively expensive? Why do venues try to control so much of the couple’s day? At one point we were talking very seriously about jumping on the next plane to New Orleans and swapping vows in the French Quarter. And that’s when Sean said it: “I’d rather just rent out a bar and have a big freakin’ party with all of our friends and forget all this wedding crap.” Cue the light bulb moment. Why in the world would we spend an arm and a leg on a venue if we were both at the point of not caring? Shouldn’t we just go with a less expensive place that we’d seen and get it over with? And if we were going to go with a less expensive place, wouldn’t we then have money in the budget to create the wedding that we wanted? And since the less expensive place couldn’t care less about who assembled my cheese platters, couldn’t we just throw a party that’s super fun and super us instead of an overblown reception? WELL OF COURSE WE CAN!
Yesterday morning I called my mom to inform her that Sean and I had finally settled on the venue of least resistance. By yesterday afternoon, my mom had confirmed that it was available. And as of 1:00PM today, I can finally tell you where the party at! And when—October 15, 2011! Save the motherlovin’ date, y’all, because it’s finally freakin’ official.
The venue we’ve booked is pretty enough to stand on its own, simple enough to support our personal touches, lax enough not to micromanage every aspect of our wedding (no list of permissible caterers, no prohibitive bar packages, no stupid premiums that would prevent us from having our wedding during the popular month that we wanted) and priced fairly enough that we might actually be able to serve food to more than half our guests (so, out-of-towners, you won’t have to stop at McDonalds after all!).
Since I now have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want (and money in the budget to fund it), I’ve decided to make the whole event all about us. I’m going to stop trying to make it the greatest wedding reception ever and start thinking of it as the biggest party Sean and I will ever throw. What kind of food would we serve, what kind of alcohol would we drink, what kind of music would we play, what kinds of treats would I bake if we were having twenty friends over to our apartment? Take that, multiply it by ten, move it to a neutral site, and bingo! Cake cutting fees and corking charges need not apply.
Who cares if the venue doesn’t have all the pomp and circumstance we thought we wanted? In the end, and with a little elbow grease, what our venue will have is the distinctive flavor of Sean and Sarah. And wouldn't you know it--I suddenly and profoundly give a shit about the wedding again!
The biggest problem was that Sean and I had very specific notions about what we wanted: a wide open room in a stand-alone building that would absolutely wow our guests as soon as they walked in. Unfortunately, fulfilling those specifications turned out to be much easier said than done. For one thing, what we wanted doesn’t really exist in DFW—pretty much all you can get in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States is a hotel ballroom or a country club that seats twenty people per room. And the few places that did fit the bill wanted to A) dictate which caterer we used, B) force us to have our rehearsal during business hours on a Thursday, and C) charge us a $7,000 rental fee and $25 a head for house wine and Bud Light. And I’m sorry, but no one in my immediate wedding planning circle can fathom spending $14,000 just so that my four year old cousin can walk in the door and have a glass of Merlot.
Everyone says couples should book their venue at least a year in advance or risk hosting the blessed event in the backyard, so I was thrilled that Sean’s relatively early proposal gave me a good 15 months to plan. And then our venue search started holding up the whole show. Since we didn’t have a venue, we didn’t have a date, so we couldn’t book our vendors. (Not that we knew what kinds of vendors we’d need anyway, since so many venues come with laundry lists of preferences and regulations.) We were getting so close to the wire (our negative one-year anniversary is next week, after all) that I couldn’t think about my wedding without a roll of Tums, a handful of Zoloft, and a shaker of vodka.
On Saturday Sean and I visited the only remaining viable venue within a 50 mile radius of our residences. Sean thought it was the nicest venue we’d seen so far, I liked it well enough to sign on the dotted line and just be done with the whole ordeal, and my parents were prepared to pay the deposit. When I went to bed on Sunday night, I felt a mild sense of relief that I would no longer have to fret about location and a nagging sense of fear that my wedding was turning into this big, ugly monster that was stomping out of my control. And then on Monday morning, the festering boil on the butt of my matrimony finally burst—all over my place of business.
I was two minutes away from my office when I got word that the venue that I thought everyone had finally agreed on didn’t pass economic muster. And then I spent the first two hours of my workday completely despondent—I sent countless distraught emails and texts and prayed that my coworkers wouldn’t notice my watery eyes or my quivering bottom lip. By the end of the morning, I’d actually gotten the green light to book any venue I wanted, but the damage was already done. Worries about the venue had been polluting my wedding planning experience for so long that they had finally rendered me completely numb to the whole event. I just wanted to skip it. (I know I’m prone to histrionics, people, but believe me when I say that at 3:00 Monday afternoon, the only five words I could speak about my wedding were “I don’t give a shit.”)
When I finally got face-time with my fiancé after work, I practically begged him to pick the venue. After all, he’d been super involved since day one, so surely he could be trusted to propel us through all the mucky muck to the blessed end. But no. He was also so disgusted by the whole process that he refused to play along. Plus he was adamant that his bride-to-be be happy with her own wedding, so he wasn’t about to chose for me.
The conversation that followed would have made George Banks blush: Why couldn’t we find a venue that suited us? Why are weddings so offensively expensive? Why do venues try to control so much of the couple’s day? At one point we were talking very seriously about jumping on the next plane to New Orleans and swapping vows in the French Quarter. And that’s when Sean said it: “I’d rather just rent out a bar and have a big freakin’ party with all of our friends and forget all this wedding crap.” Cue the light bulb moment. Why in the world would we spend an arm and a leg on a venue if we were both at the point of not caring? Shouldn’t we just go with a less expensive place that we’d seen and get it over with? And if we were going to go with a less expensive place, wouldn’t we then have money in the budget to create the wedding that we wanted? And since the less expensive place couldn’t care less about who assembled my cheese platters, couldn’t we just throw a party that’s super fun and super us instead of an overblown reception? WELL OF COURSE WE CAN!
Yesterday morning I called my mom to inform her that Sean and I had finally settled on the venue of least resistance. By yesterday afternoon, my mom had confirmed that it was available. And as of 1:00PM today, I can finally tell you where the party at! And when—October 15, 2011! Save the motherlovin’ date, y’all, because it’s finally freakin’ official.
The venue we’ve booked is pretty enough to stand on its own, simple enough to support our personal touches, lax enough not to micromanage every aspect of our wedding (no list of permissible caterers, no prohibitive bar packages, no stupid premiums that would prevent us from having our wedding during the popular month that we wanted) and priced fairly enough that we might actually be able to serve food to more than half our guests (so, out-of-towners, you won’t have to stop at McDonalds after all!).
Since I now have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want (and money in the budget to fund it), I’ve decided to make the whole event all about us. I’m going to stop trying to make it the greatest wedding reception ever and start thinking of it as the biggest party Sean and I will ever throw. What kind of food would we serve, what kind of alcohol would we drink, what kind of music would we play, what kinds of treats would I bake if we were having twenty friends over to our apartment? Take that, multiply it by ten, move it to a neutral site, and bingo! Cake cutting fees and corking charges need not apply.
Who cares if the venue doesn’t have all the pomp and circumstance we thought we wanted? In the end, and with a little elbow grease, what our venue will have is the distinctive flavor of Sean and Sarah. And wouldn't you know it--I suddenly and profoundly give a shit about the wedding again!
